How Jeff Bridges failed to win an Oscar for Starman and later Jim Carrey for Man in the Moon I'll never understand.
While It's a great thing to see, with that mod that lets you play GE and Perfect Dark in upscaled 4k with a mouse and keyboard (like a proper FPS), I personally don't need it in my life. *One of the co-creators of said mod is the person Calvin links in the description. Which was just an awful idea. And IMO the film's fatal flaw. Because all it does is naturally draw comparisons to a similar but far superior character. (And it doubles down on this with comparisons to yet another similar and [far] superior character with all the CR references.) It's especially problematic because, for the big dramatic beat to work, the audience needs to find said character compelling enough to grow attachment and compassion for. That's really hard to do when being bombarded with references to two nearly identical characters who did it much better.
Madeleine was just never very interesting. At all. She wasn't effective in Spectre and was only slightly better in NTTD. Any enjoyment I get from the most recent film stems from elements other than Madeleine and even their daughter outshines and is more interesting than she.
I didn't particularly like Madeline in Spectre, and didn't think she and Craig had much chemistry but have to say I liked her lot better in NTTD.
I've seen No Time to Die only once, and my opinion could change with further viewings. Spoiler But I did not think that all of the references to "We Have All the Time in the World" worked well. The subtle references at the beginning of the film were fine, haunting even. But once it became the theme that the film was going to end on and then did end on, I thought the interaction of the music and lyrics with the story became a muddled mess. The main problem, as I saw it, was that when you compare the feelings of loss that Bond felt in the two films, while there were some parallels, there were in fact profound differences. The tragic irony in the interaction of music, lyrics, and story in OHMSS is inapplicable in NTTD. This raises the question: why reuse the song at all in that situation? Why not create an entirely new song? Is it really that hard to make a great song for such an occasion? I guess it is, because they thought the better idea was to double-click on copy and paste.
It was lazy, but I love the song so much and found the overall film good enough to just shrug, go "I see why they decided to do this" and just immerse myself in the closing credits.
Does amuse me that in the very next film Blofeld is all "science was never my strong suit" also you have to love how Savalas holds his cigarettes. I still love this!
In my head canon I just figure Blofeld was checking on progress in the lab rather than actively participating in the Virus Omega creation, but hey, once DAF and Charles Gray decided they were going to more or less ignore OHMSS you have to head canon certain things just so they all fit in somehow.
True. Savalas my not have been an active scientist in the lab, but he clearly understood on some level what was going on, Gray not so much!
Savalas was the only Blofeld I felt was really a match for Bond. Maybe it's because I'm looking at it in the rearview mirror (and saw Austin Powers before I saw any of the films from the "Blofeld trilogy"), but after teasing Blofeld in From Russia with Love and Thunderball, his reveal in YOLT was kind of a letdown. And the less said about Charles Gray and DAF, the better. The version of Blofeld that Savalas played was not only smart and menacing, but was also a more physical villain. And his evil scheme in OHMSS was one of the more plausible ones they've concocted over the years.
Even the faceless Blofeld that Bond finally kills in For Your Eyes Only is a more effective Blofeld than Charles Gray.
When I finally go, I hope my last words are better than "I'll buy you a delicatessen! In stainless steel!!"
In 50th Anniversaryland, "Diamonds Are Forever" by Shirley Bassey enters the Hot 100 this week, to peak at #57. It gets to #14 on the Adult Contemporary chart, or Easy Listening or whatever they would have been calling it at that particular time.
Beautiful song. Shame the film that it accompanies can't live up to that quality. But at least the DAF soundtrack is a lot of fun.